NGWave

At a Glance

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I must admit, having used just about every wave editor that's ever
run on a PC, I wasn't expecting much out of NGWave. Talk about your
pleasant surprises. The program is possibly the easiest,
friendliest audio editor (especially when compared to freeware Audacity)
I've seen, and certainly one of the fastest. Even compared to big
boys like Steinberg's WaveLab and Sony's SoundForge.

The program is laced with useful flourishes, such as locking
that selection tool so it always selects both channels of a stereo
audio file and slider adjustment of FX parameters. NGWave is also
extremely fast (it bears repeating), offers non-destructive
application of FX, and allows multiple undos. It also supports 8-
to 32-bit, as well as 32- and 64-Bit IEEE floating point wave files
from 4 kHz to 192 kHz. Many inexpensive editors stop at 48kHz or
96kHz.

Where NGWave starts to reflect its low price is in its smallish
feature set. Though the program lets you multiple open files and
allows seamless cut and paste to and from the any file types it
supports (converting on the fly), that's only .wav, .aiff, and .mp3
(with an external CODEC). You'll need to convert other types such
as .wma, .flac, .ogg, etc. to .wav files with another program
before editing them. There's also no support for either DirectX or
VST processing and FX plug-ins. These literally number in the
thousands and support for them is a must for pros.

Nits aside, I found that NGWave's built-in effects and
processing worked quite well, the list of which includes: noise
reduction, delay, reverb, flange, FFT filter, compression,
limiting, distortion and the usual dynamic processing. Curiously
missing was chorusing, though the flanger can be adjusted to mimic
this effect. I also missed Audacity's simple 78/45/33 vinyl
conversion though there are both time and pitch correction on
board.

NGWave may not have all the FX and format support of a top-shelf
wave editor, but it's far less expensive and it handles the basics
quickly and efficiently. If you're frustrated with Audacity's
confusing interface and don't have anything else available to you,
it's well worth the $30. It's also worth keeping an eye on as the
company adds new features. The demo won't save files, but is
otherwise completely functional.

Amazon Shop buttons are programmatically attached to all reviews, regardless of products' final review scores. Our parent company, IDG, receives advertisement revenue for shopping activity generated by the links. Because the buttons are attached programmatically, they should not be interpreted as editorial endorsements.